Roller weighting means for textile



Aug. 6, fi s? J. NCGUERA ROLLER WEIGHTING MEANS FOR TEXTILE BRE DRAFTING MECHANISMS Filed Dec. 22, 1953 United States Patent i ROLLER WEIGHTING MEANS FOR TEXTILE FlBRE DRAFTING MECHANISMS Joseph Noguera, Salford, England, assignor to Casablancas High Draft Company Limited, Manchester, England, a British company Application December 22, 1953, Serial No. 399,677

Claims priority, application Great Britain January 22, 1953 6 Claims. (Cl. 19-136) This invention relates to roller weighting means for textile fibre drafting mechanisms of the kind in which a weighting spring is arranged to exert a downward pull on a saddle assembly bearing on the top rollers of cooperating roller pairs. This weighting spring is normally mounted beneath the roller pairs with which it is associated and acts on the saddle assembly through a weighting hook which depends from the assembly between consecutive roller pairs.

For the efficient operation of such mechanisms it, is necessary for the spring to respond very quickly to small vertical movements of the saddle assembly since, otherwise, the weighting pressure on fibres being drawn will not always be sufiiciently even and continuous. A main object of the present invention is to provide an improved and simplified spring assembly and mounting whereby the spring is free to operate in the required manner, and, at the same time, can readily be assembled or dismantled. A further important object of the invention is to facilitate transmission of the spring action to the saddle assembly in cases where it is more convenient to mount the spring behind or out of alignment with the weighting hook on the drafting mechanism.

According to the present invention there is provided roller weighting means, for textile fibre drafting mechanisms of the kind specified, wherein the weighting spring is suspended within a hollow beam mounted longitudinally of the mechanism and out of alignment with the dependent end of a co-operating saddle assembly weighting hook, the said spring being arranged to exert a downward pull on said hook through the intermediary of a fulcrumed lever. With such an arrangement the weighting spring can conveniently be mounted towards the rear of the drafting mechanism, the lever being fulcrumed in a slot in a side wall of the beam and extending towards the front of the mechanism for connection with the weighting hook which depends immediately behind the front rollers.

In order that the invention may be clearly understood and; readily carried into effect, one embodiment thereof will now be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings in which:

Figure l is a part-sectional side elevation showing a portion of a drafting mechanism incorporating the invention, conventional. parts of the mechanism which have no bearing on the invention being omitted or broken away for purposes of clarity, and

Figure 2 is an underneath plan view of the spring assembly and weight transmitting lever as illustrated in Figure 1.

Referring now to the drawings, the invention is applied to a drafting mechanism having a number of drafting systems arranged side by side and supported at intervals by the usual roller stands 1, each system being composed of a. number of consecutive. pairs of drafting rollers 2, 3 and 4. A pair of co-operating endless bands 4b is applied to the rollers of the intermediate roller pair ice 3 in well known manner and the rollers may have conventional clearers associated therewith as shown, there being an under clearer 5 co-operating with the bottom rollers of the roller pairs 3 and 4, a top clearer 6 co operating with the top roller of the roller pair 2 and a further top clearer 7 co-operating with the top rollers of the roller pairs 3 and 4.

The top rollers of two adjoining systems in the drafting mechanism are weighted through the intermediary of a saddle assembly which, in this particular example, is composed of a front saddle 8 which bears down on necks 2a and 311 between the top rollers of the front and intermediate roller pairs 2 and 3 in the adjoining systems, and a rear saddle 9 which bears on the neck 4a between the top rollers of the rear roller pairs 4 in the said systems. The saddles 8 and 9 are pivotally connected by means of a pivot pin 10 which passes transversely through the saddle 8 and engages a lug 11 which depends from the saddle 9 into a slot in the saddle 8. It will be appreciated, however, that the particular saddle construction illustrated forms no part of the present invention and may be replaced by other known saddle assemblies as required.

The bearing pressure transmitted by the saddle assembly is obtained by a downward pull on the assembly transmitted through a weighting hook 12 which depends from a transverse pivot pin 13 in the saddle 9, through a slot in the saddle 8 and between the front and second roller lines. The lower hooked end 12a of the Weighting hook is located well below the drafting rollers as illustrated.

The downward pull transmitted through the weighting hook 12 is produced by a weighting spring 14 which is caused to act on the dependent hook end 12a of the weighting hook. The weighting spring 14 is in the form of a coil spring which is mounted under compression between upper and lower spring plates 15, 16 the lower plate 16 being secured to a rod 17 which extends axially through the spring and through the two plates, and has a hooked head 18 projecting above the upper plate. At the junction of the hooked head 18 and the rod 17 there is provided a downwardly directed shoulder 19 which constitutes a stop to limit the upward movement of the upper plate 15 under the extensive action of the spring 14. The spring 14 and associated rod 17 are mounted in a suspended position within a hollow beam 20 of inverted U-section, by engagement of the hooked head 18 of the rod over an edge part of an elongated slot 21 in the top Wall of the beam and by the entry of an inturned extremity 18a of the hooked head into a small aperture in the top of the beam which is displaced from the engaged edge. of the slot 21.

The beam 20, which is of such width that the spring plates 15, 16 are well out of contact with the beam side walls, is mountedlongitudinally of the drafting mechanism, that is to say extends substantially parallel to the longitudinal axes of the roller lines. The length of the beam 20 is such that it spans the distance between adjoining roller stands 1, the beam being attached at each end to such a stand towards the rear of the drafting mechanism. In this position the downwardly directed open side of the beam will be readily accessible fromthe rear of the mechanism for the purpose of positioning or removing the spring 14; 1

To facilitate attachment of the beam ends to the respective roller stands, each stand has two. lugs 21a cast as an integral part thereof and arranged to enter between the beam side walls at the adjoining beam ends. The beam side walls are then attached to the lugs 21a by means of bolts 22 which engage the respective lugs through elongated slots in the beam side walls. The provision of such elongated slots enables the beam to be vertically adjusted in relation to the roller stands to a limited extent. It will be appreciated that each roller stand will normally have two such lugs 21a projecting on each side thereof so that each stand can support adjoining ends of two aligned beams in the drafting niechamsm.

In the side wall of the beam which is directed towards the front of the drafting mechanism and near the top of this wall, there is provided a slot 24 through which the bifurcated ends 25a of a weight transmitting lever 25 project into the beam. The bifurcated lever ends 25a within the beam 20 are operatively positioned one on each side of the hooked head 18 on the spring rod 17 and arranged to bear down on the upper surface of the top spring plate 15. The opposite end of the lever 25 extends forwardly from the beam towards the front of the mechanism where its extremity 25b is in a relatively accessible position. The edges of the slot 24 in the spring beam side wall through which the lever ends 25a project constitute a fulcrum for the lever, the spring action on the lever ends in the beam being such that the lever is urged upwardly behind the fulcrum whilst the forward lever end 2512 in front of the fulcrum, is correspondingly urged downwardly.

The forward lever end 2512 is arranged for attachment to the dependent weighting hook end 1211 by entering the said weighting hook end between the lever bifurcations, in front of the fulcrum, for engagement with a rearwardly directed transverse shoulder 26 at the junction of these bifurcations. To facilitate engagement of the weighting hook end 12a between the lever bifurcations, the upper edges of the latter adjacent the shoulder 26 are out-turned at 27 to provide plane surfaces over which the weighting hook end can be guided into position.

To facilitate disengagement of the weighting hook end 12a from the weighting lever shoulder 26 for the purpose of unweighting the saddle assembly, a pivoted cam member 28 is mounted on the forward end 25b of the weighting lever by means of a transverse pivot pin 29, the leading upper part of the cam member 28 being located between bifurcations at the forward lever end and the rear part of the cam member depending from the under edge of the lever. At its leading end the cam member 28 is provided with a readily accessible finger piece whereby the lever and cam member can be lifted to relieve the weight on the weighting book 12 and whereby the cam member 28 can also be turned about its pivot 29 and caused to bear against the lower extremity 12a of the weighting hook for the purpose of displacing this hook out of engagement with the shoulder 26. Once the weight-- ing hook has been disengaged, the weighting lever 25 can be lowered about its fulcrum into a position in which engagement between the weighting hook end 12a and the shoulder 26 can no longer take place, whereupon the weighting hook and saddle assembly can readily be with drawn as desired.

The arrangement as described permits very simple assembly or dismantling of the entire weighting means and also permits the weight on the saddle assembly to be applied or relieved in an extremely simple manner from the front of the mechanism. For the purpose of dismantling the spring 14, all that is necessary, once the weight has been removed from the saddle assembly, is to lift the spring and bearing plates so that the hooked rod head 18 is disengaged from the aperture and slot edge in the top of the spring beam, and then to move the head laterally in its slot 21 into a position where it can be readily withdrawn. Assembly can also take place in an equally simple manner. Similarly the weighting lever. 25 can readily be withdrawn from or positioned, on its fulcrum as required.

It will be appreciated that the suspended position of the weighting spring 14, out of contact with the beam side walls, ensures that there will be no frictional resistance to the spring operation so that the spring will respond with extreme rapidity to vertical movement of the saddle assembly.

Whilst a single weighting spring and saddle assembly serving the top rollers of two adjoining systems have been described, each spring beam will in fact contain a number of weighting springs each serving separate saddle assemblies along the roller lines.

I claim:

1. In a textile fibre drafting mechanism having con secutive pairs of drafting rollers, roller weighting means comprising, in combination, a saddle assembly for bearing on the top rollers of said roller pairs, a weight transmitting hook depending from said saddle assembly, a hollow beam fixed longitudinally of the drafting mechanism and rearwardly of said hook, a weighting spring suspended within said beam out of contact with the beam walls and a lever fulcrumed in the front wall of said beam and extending forwardly from the beam to engage said hook and rearwardly into the beam to bear on said spring so that the spring reaction exerts a downward pull on said saddle assembly through the intermediary of said fulcrumed lever and weight hook.

2. The combination as claimed in claim 1 in which said hollow beam is of inverted U-section and extends between adjoining roller stands of the drafting mechanism to accommodate the weighting springs of a plurality of adjoining roller weighting means.

3. The combination as claimed in claim 2 further including means for vertically adjusting the position of said beam in relation to said stands.

4. The combination claimed in claim 1 in which the weighting spring is in the form of a coil spring mounted under compression between upper and lower floating plates, said lower plate being secured to a rod which extends axially through the spring and plates and is releasably hooked to the top wall of the beam and said upper plate being arranged to bear upwardly against the rearward extension of said fulcrumed lever.

5. The combination claimed in claim 1 in which said fulcrumed lever is bifurcated rearwardly from a transverse weight hook engaging shoulder in front of the lever fulcrum and a pivoted cam member is mounted at the forward end of said lever with a readily accessible finger piece whereby the lever and cam member can be lifted to relieve the spring action on the weighting hook and whereby the cam member can also be turned about its pivot to displace the weighting book out of engagement with said shoulder.

6. Roller weighting means for the top rollers in a textile fibre drafting mechanism comprising a saddle assembly for bearing on said top rollers, a weighting hook dependent from said saddle assembly, a hollow inverted U- section beam adjustably mounted longitudinally of the mechanism behind the lower end of said weighting book, a weighting spring suspended under compression within said beam out of contact with the beam walls and a weight transmitting lever fulcrumed in a slot in the front beam wall and extending forwardly of the beam for engagement with said lower weighting hook end and rearwardly into the beam to receive upward pressure from said spring and thereby to transmit a downward pull to said weighting hook.

References Cited in the file of this patent UNITED STATES PATENTS 2,000,660 Casablancas May 7, 1935 2,373,176 Dickison Apr. 10, 1945 2,430,706 Burnham Nov. 11, 1947 2,602,966 Noguera July 15, 1952 2,621,372 Wilkie Dec. 16, 1952 

